Align is not Enough: Multimodal Universal Jailbreak Attack against Multimodal Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wang, Youze, Hu, Wenbo, Dong, Yinpeng, Liu, Jing, Zhang, Hanwang, Hong, Richang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912409176768512
author Wang, Youze
Hu, Wenbo
Dong, Yinpeng
Liu, Jing
Zhang, Hanwang
Hong, Richang
author_facet Wang, Youze
Hu, Wenbo
Dong, Yinpeng
Liu, Jing
Zhang, Hanwang
Hong, Richang
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have evolved into Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), significantly enhancing their capabilities by integrating visual information and other types, thus aligning more closely with the nature of human intelligence, which processes a variety of data forms beyond just text. Despite advancements, the undesirable generation of these models remains a critical concern, particularly due to vulnerabilities exposed by text-based jailbreak attacks, which have represented a significant threat by challenging existing safety protocols. Motivated by the unique security risks posed by the integration of new and old modalities for MLLMs, we propose a unified multimodal universal jailbreak attack framework that leverages iterative image-text interactions and transfer-based strategy to generate a universal adversarial suffix and image. Our work not only highlights the interaction of image-text modalities can be used as a critical vulnerability but also validates that multimodal universal jailbreak attacks can bring higher-quality undesirable generations across different MLLMs. We evaluate the undesirable context generation of MLLMs like LLaVA, Yi-VL, MiniGPT4, MiniGPT-v2, and InstructBLIP, and reveal significant multimodal safety alignment issues, highlighting the inadequacy of current safety mechanisms against sophisticated multimodal attacks. This study underscores the urgent need for robust safety measures in MLLMs, advocating for a comprehensive review and enhancement of security protocols to mitigate potential risks associated with multimodal capabilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_01307
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Align is not Enough: Multimodal Universal Jailbreak Attack against Multimodal Large Language Models
Wang, Youze
Hu, Wenbo
Dong, Yinpeng
Liu, Jing
Zhang, Hanwang
Hong, Richang
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) have evolved into Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), significantly enhancing their capabilities by integrating visual information and other types, thus aligning more closely with the nature of human intelligence, which processes a variety of data forms beyond just text. Despite advancements, the undesirable generation of these models remains a critical concern, particularly due to vulnerabilities exposed by text-based jailbreak attacks, which have represented a significant threat by challenging existing safety protocols. Motivated by the unique security risks posed by the integration of new and old modalities for MLLMs, we propose a unified multimodal universal jailbreak attack framework that leverages iterative image-text interactions and transfer-based strategy to generate a universal adversarial suffix and image. Our work not only highlights the interaction of image-text modalities can be used as a critical vulnerability but also validates that multimodal universal jailbreak attacks can bring higher-quality undesirable generations across different MLLMs. We evaluate the undesirable context generation of MLLMs like LLaVA, Yi-VL, MiniGPT4, MiniGPT-v2, and InstructBLIP, and reveal significant multimodal safety alignment issues, highlighting the inadequacy of current safety mechanisms against sophisticated multimodal attacks. This study underscores the urgent need for robust safety measures in MLLMs, advocating for a comprehensive review and enhancement of security protocols to mitigate potential risks associated with multimodal capabilities.
title Align is not Enough: Multimodal Universal Jailbreak Attack against Multimodal Large Language Models
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01307